Shared Sovereignty and Accountability in Fragile States

This Donia Human Rights Center event will feature a discussion of Sovereignty Sharing in Fragile States a new book by University of Michigan Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy professor John Ciorciari in conversation with Prof. Susanna Campbell of American University, an expert on peacebuilding and international interventions. Ciorciari will share findings from the book, outlining conditions under which shared sovereignty tends to fail or succeed in advancing accountability for human rights violations. He will pay special attention to the contrasting experiences of “hybrid” criminal tribunals for Sierra Leone, Cambodia and Lebanon and a unique international anti-impunity commission in Guatemala. Campbell will offer comments and insights based on her extensive research on global-local interactions in international peacebuilding initiatives in Africa, Asia, and beyond.

From the speakers' bios

John D. Ciorciari is an associate professor of public policy at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, where he directs the Weiser Diplomacy Center and International Policy Center. He is also a faculty affiliate of the Donia Human Rights Center. His research focuses on international law and politics in the Global South, with a particular focus on Asia. He is the author of "Sovereignty Sharing in Fragile States" (Stanford University Press, 2021) and co-author of "Hybrid Justice: The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia" (University of Michigan Press 2014), among other articles and books. He has been an Andrew Carnegie Fellow, an Asia Society Fellow, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford, a policy official in the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of International Affairs, and an associate at the international law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell. He holds a BA and JD from Harvard and an MPhil and DPhil from Oxford, where he was a Fulbright Scholar.

Susanna Campbell is assistant professor at the School of International Service at American University and director of the Research on International Policy Implementation Lab. Her research focuses on statebuilding, peacebuilding, peacekeeping, international development and humanitarian aid, international institutions and NGOs, and issues of civil war and peace. She is the author of "Global Governance and Local Peace" (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and co-author of book manuscript entitled "Aid in Conflict." She has conducted extensive fieldwork in conflict-affected countries, received several large grants for her research, and published widely in prominent peer-reviewed journals. She also engages regularly in policy practice. She directs the Research on International Policy Implementation Lab (RIPIL), an affiliate of Bridging the Gap, and recently completed her term as a senior advisor for the congressionally-mandated Task Force on Extremism in Fragile States. She has led evaluations of the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund, United Nations Development Program, the World Bank, the UK Department for International Development (DFID), and Care International. She has also worked for the Council on Foreign Relations and UNICEF Burundi. She received her PhD in 2012 from Tufts University and was a Post-Doctoral Researcher at The Graduate Institute in Geneva and Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies.

• shared sovereignty
• accountability
• Fragile States
• John Ciorciari
• peacebuilding
• Donia Human Rights Center
• Susanna Campbell